Form and Formlessness

Monday, January 5, 2015

One may be able to infer from these words the nature of an inner struggle. It is a struggle that has endured in one form or another since childhood. Now that I’m a father, now that I look every day on my baby son and experience the wild array of emotions that come with watching him coalesce and evolve, this struggle has become all at once completely inane and yet all the more intense. It is winter. My one method of preference is exposure. Yet I have a powerful new reason to cope with the fears and uncertainties that have plagued my being for as long as I can remember.

I must be

I must be more than memory,
more than just a name,
more than faded echoes cast
from pictures in a frame.

I must be more than faint suspicions
coiled in the heart,
smoke-like apparitions drifting
through a starless dark.

I must be more than supposition,
more than just a guess,
fashioned from a dust that fell
through years of emptiness.

I must be more than stories told
by uncles, aunts and kin,
anecdotes of vague recall
from time beyond your ken.

I must be more than fantasies
of how things might have been,
conjured up to fill a void
that widened in my stead.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

As with the previous haiku, this was written as part of a dedication when I gave a copy of my book to a friend. Years and years ago, I met and got to know him a little while we both still lived in Ukiah, California. He now lives in Colorado; I in Reno, Nevada. One never knows where life will lead. Wherever that may be, the scent and sight of autumn's first rains in the hills around Ukiah will never be forgotten.

Saturday, January 3, 2015

I recently found occasion to sign a copy of an inkling hope to an author who has over the years influenced my style and approach to poetry. When I did, I wrote this small dedication. His nom de plume is blended amongst the words and imagery.

Monday, October 20, 2014

I happened to visit a storefront a couple weeks back that's nestled in the eastern foothills of the Sierras along I80, a few miles west of Reno. Soon as I pulled up, I noticed the full moon and realized my luck. I hurried my way into and out of the store so I could hang out a while and take in the view. As I did so, watching every subtle change for 20 minutes or so as dusk rose up to meet and overtake the moon, I couldn't help but notice that not one of the several dozen people who came to make a purchase from this store so much as looked up to take notice of this spectacular scene unfolding before and around them. In some ways I felt sorry for these people, in other ways frustrated. How does one not notice such splendor? How does one stand before the throne of God and see nothing? I thought that impossible strains and terrors must be burdening and goading these poor creatures along to render them so incapable of seeing this rare panorama that perhaps occurs only once a year.

October Moonrise

large and silent the full moon hovers over
a pine studded ridge just inside the gray
purple haze that marks the closing
edge of night

dark citrine plates climb high into a pair
of ponderosas where they reach out to join
spiky tufts of green that overhang and
frame the moon

overhead cloudless skies still resonate
the deep cool purity of day as ravens
quietly fan claw-like wings up the canyon
home to roost

that hazy rim rises faster than the moon
it folds like an eyelid ever so slowly
on the all-seeing gaze of Odin’s singular
ice blue orb

a few of the keenest stars begin to burn
through darkness that gradually creeps
up from the long horizon like a distant fog to
touch the moon

cars pull to a pause in the newly paved lot
people emerge thumbing their phones
to the store and back never once lifting
up their heads

i sit on a rock by the concrete walkway
eyes struggling to take in every nuance
chest riven by a surreal resonance with
all i see

Thursday, October 2, 2014

I had a sense of my calling by the time I was 12, but it wasn’t until the middle of 2001, 18 years later before I knew for sure. The calling is a strange thing. It doesn’t come with instructions. There are no guides. To follow it may be just as difficult as not to, but for very different reasons. The force of one’s calling demands all attention. If one turns one’s back on it at this point, out of fear of poverty, marginalization, or not being able to realize its potential, then the despair that follows is as overpowering and destructive as the circumstances may be in heeding that call. For me, heeding the call meant simply casting myself on the current that had already swept away all else, and staying afloat as best I can. And in my case, it really has meant poverty, marginalization, and a continuing uncertainty with regard to realizing its potential.

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

My hope was that I was going to be able to use this sonnet form to write a pen portrait of a man, possibly homeless, who during the winter ambles a ratty old bicycle down the avenues near where I work, dispersing bird seed to the fowl. He trundles along with a 5 gallon, neon orange bucket hanging from a handlebar. At various vacant lots, some of which are fenced in, he stops on the sidewalk and lobs great big handfuls of seed out across the gravel or asphalt. As he approaches one of the feeding places, the sky darkens with winged creatures, which land in a whirl of calls and flapping feathers. They are so used to this man that they let the birdseed fall directly upon them, bouncing from wing, beak and back.

I know nothing about this “bird man,” as I’ve come to think of him, save for the image of his moving among the streets in the dim light of dawn, arcing fistfuls of seed over his head and chest. His face is a mass of unkempt hair, his snow jacket old and held together with duct tape. His clothes are layered in tatters and crusted with dirt and debris. Yet for all his apparent misfortune, he has made it his mission to by some means acquire this seed and feed the cities winged residents during the winter.

After a few weeks of trying to get the imagery in mind to bend to this sonnet form, I finally decided to give up and let the words and images find themselves. Sometimes the only way a poem gets written is to let go of the originating idea, allowing the words to choose and arrange themselves. Under such circumstances, the poet merely facilitates a process that was somehow already occurring, already waiting disembodied in the ether to find a channel into existence.

Winter Relief

The mourning dove lifts pale, majestic wings,
illuminating vacant, asphalt grounds.
A shadow moves amid the murmurings
of feathered creatures stirring all around
him as unsteadily he trundles down
the frozen sidewalks with an orange pail
suspended from a handlebar; the sound
of squeaking tires mingles with a gale
of pigeons, sparrows, jays that dance like hail
across a gravel, weed-strewn parking lot.
He stops and probes the neon depths to bail
a scoop of birdseed—harmless scattershot—
which, reaching back, he arcs above his head
to bounce among the birds with even spread.

This is my 2nd Spenserian sonnet. It was my intention to strictly adhere to the rhyme scheme for this second pass at the form, but the word pool was just too small for the b scheme, so I kept extending it until enough words became available to allow for a fairly natural flow of language and imagery. Still a partial rhyme by all accounts, since all four words share the “oun” phonemes.

Monday, September 8, 2014

If you take the lips—curved to a smile—as the bow, the cooing voice as the string, and eye contact as the arrows, then you may have Cupid himself, my son. Never in my life has love struck me so deep in the chest over and over, with each look and smile—each sincere, honest smile.

Cupid

Not one great archer of ancient times—
not Arash, Arjuna, Houyi or Oddyseus—
not even the ageless Titans had strength
enough to bend back and string your bow.

Yet each day with remarkable ease you
curl back the tips and notch the string.

With hardly a thought you draw back one
shaft after another, and each streak of light
finds its mark deep in the still-beating heart,
the only wound a fire of unbridled affection.

My ribs are riddled, glowing warm
with the mystery of your unassuming skill.

Sunday, August 31, 2014

He has a floor mat with a domed shape tripod frame that sets over it. Toy animals hang from the frame just low enough for him to whack at, grab onto, and of course look at. When it comes time to feed, I’ll often sit down next to the mat, slide him over and rest his head just above my ankle bone, which gives the bottle a nice angle, especially since it’s the type of bottle that doesn’t run freely. He has to really suck out the formula.

Sitting there thus, I’ll hunch over and look at him while he nurses the bottle. Lately he has taken to looking at me, too—right in the eyes. We stare at one another, and wildly intense, indescribable emotions well up. Here I’ve attempted to depict some aspect of those emotions, as best I can.

Gray Brown Eyes

I don’t know what you’re thinking
or if you’re thinking

Your eyes are oceans of ancestry
and each time you look at me
each time you study my face with
those pure wide open wells
I begin to drown in their fathomless
age

Then
gently slowly
you blink
and look away

For a moment the spell is broken
and I gasp for breath in my soul
claw at the rocks and pull myself
ashore
ribs bellowing

Yet your eyes flood back to me
relentless as a tidal bore
and I am swept along and pressed
among debris to wash end over end
through unremembered histories

The momentum slows to a pause
for the space of a kick and a flail
then broken splintered timbers sweep
back once more toward that ancient
abysmal pain

And just as I lose the last of my
strength to tread that awful swell
amid invisible fragments of time that
scrape and cut hands feet and mind
and I let go to slip drift sink beneath
darkness

Friday, August 1, 2014

Roiling coiling boiling
beyond memory dreams
phase and shift in amniotic mists
swirl in the silence of pulsation
swim in the stillness of song and dance

Slowly gently gradually
sensations coalesce illuminating
shapes only somewhat guessed before
till time takes hold and presses
long hard strained contractions
bearing breath into the light
where lungs expel a fluid reverie
and struggle with thin arid vapors of life

Now spry pink fingers fan out
new translucent maple leaves
that ball and bob and grasp
at each candescent moment
each ray of raw potential
emerging from the void

ii

Ailing paling failing
beyond hope of recall
yesteryears evaporate like mists
drift in and out of apprehension
drone in the absence of conscious thought

Fiercely surely naturally
perception dissipates into a darkness
shapes only somewhat recognized
as time slows down and shuffles
somber strained abstractions
toward an ever shifting shade
where lungs expand in fluid misery
and struggle at each dim sensation of life

Here sun browned fingers curl up
frail exhausted walnut leaves
that twist and creak and claw
at brief pellucid moments
at dreams of lost potential
returning to the void

iii

An old oak grows on the side of a hill,
the side that faces the afternoon sun;
on the ground in the grass, her litterfall
has collected around her ancient trunk,
its bottommost layers turned back to soil.

A short distance away the blanched remains
of a sister lies rotting in the grass,
her wood resculpted by late autumn rains
and frosts that covered her corpse with a glass
that deepened the wedges along the grain.

The old oak rises, the last of her kin;
her trunk is split and a third of her limbs
in perpetual winter scrape like bone
the progression of ever changing climes—
the blistering azure, the thunder’s groan.

In the shape of a crescent moon, decay
has collected around her knobby base,
the twigs and branches that once would display
a green that shimmered now turning to waste
where skeletal shadows reach out and pray.

Another third is beginning to wane,
the crown has turned to a light mottled shade
and the leaves have begun to curl and thin
where, before, a reflective glimmer played
like fairy folk dancing within the sun.

She is old; she was old when condors soared
in the skies that revolve above her leaves;
for centuries she has weathered the storms
that lumber in from the watery weaves
which pattern the sandscapes of distant shores.

Her time is near, as it nears for us all;
the vibrancy of her youth has been lost
to the powerful change that claims us all,
yet she faces the end and bears the worst
with a grace that exists within us all.

At the end of my book, an inkling hope—available at Amazon.com, I dedicated some space to describing the synthetic ode since three are included therein. This is what I wrote, including a few minor edits:

Synthetic odes explore and synthesize opposites in three parts. Part I introduces and explores a thesis, on any subject; part II introduces and explores its antithesis, which can be an opposing force, an opposite meaning, a contrasting aesthetic, and so on; and part III attempts to in some way synthesize the contrasts set forth by parts I and II. This can be done in numerous ways. For instance, in “Contrast” yin (thesis) and yang (antithesis) are brought together in a sort of karmic dance (synthesis) through eternity.

Parts I and II can be in any format, but they must be accentually isometric to one another and contain at least seven points of parallelism within and/or between them—preferably more. An example of parallelism is end-line rhyme, but the parallelisms can be semantic (like “mind,” “thought” and “id”) or any of the various alternatives to rhyme, such as with frame rhyme (“spring” and “sprung”). Part III can also be in any format, but must not replicate the format of parts I and II, and it must contain at least four points of parallelism within it—again, preferably more.

No first person personal pronouns can be used anywhere in the poem, so one’s “self” must be removed as a direct reference. Lastly, no two synthetic odes (from the same author) can share the same structure. So, in a sense, the synthetic ode is a kind of free verse despite the rules and restrictions placed on the form because the structure must be arrived at in a spontaneous manner each time one is written.

I designed this form for my own purposes to help me explore some of the abstract, aesthetic and visually expressive attributes of poetry.

So, with this poem, “Samsara”, part i explores birth, or coming into being; part ii explores death, or going out of being; and part iii explores impermanence, or the stream of beingness. Most of the parallelisms in parts i and ii exist between the two segments. You may find it an interesting experience to read parts i and ii at the same time, line by line.

Another thing that may catch your attention as you read is that part iii uses an entirely different style than the first two parts. Everything about it is different. Parts i and ii read like free verse while part iii reads more like a piece of classical poetry. This is intentional. This is meant to jar the senses by jabbing a sliver of “impermanence” under the fingernail of thought.

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

We knew the name within an hour of finding out she was pregnant. We batted around a couple of ideas, and when "Malaya" jumped out we both knew this would be the name. It took neither one of us to convince the other. We just knew. "Malaya" is Tagalog for "Free".

Some have asked me what it felt like to discover that I would be a father. It's not an easy thing to put into words. In fact, it's beyond complex. Poetry may be the only verbal or written medium where it could even be attempted. So, here it is—to the best of my ability. Here is what it felt like.

Malaya

Everywhere they sense it

To the west in the mountains
the junco hops to the cedar's highest twig
and warbles out to the east
the marmot comes out from beneath his rock
and twitches his whiskers east
the big ram balances on a granite crag
and nods his great curled horns to the east

To the south in the sun-stroked deserts
the scorpion stops in the underbrush
and scrabbles to face the north
the wary diamondback quiets his rattle
and flickers his tongue to the north
the gray fox peers from her rocky den
and turns her head to the north

To the east where grasses sing to passing clouds
the large elk cranes his rack from the stream
and fills his eyes with the west
the black-tailed prairie dogs climb from the earth
and gaze as one to the west
the bald eagle breaks from her circled flight
and rises on winds from the west

To the north on the ageless tundra
the stern-faced grizzly stops to check the breeze
and points his nose to the south
the caribou pause on long expanses of green
and lift their heads to the south
the ptarmigan hops to a boulder-top
and studies the view to the south

Even on the far side of the world
the lion shakes his mane and sniffs
quietly at the air
the elephant matriarch raises her trunk
fans her ears and scans the horizon
the old crocodile holds his lunge and allows
the watering wildebeest to bound away

And for a moment
for the briefest inkling of time
the sun the distant stars
the planets and their moons
the far-flung comets and meteors
and even the most faded galaxies
pause completely still

For a new star has flared life in the darkness
borne on ancient cosmic winds
from the dust of all that has ever been

And his name is Free
as white billowed clouds
as thistledown on the breeze
as cottonwood seeds blown through the void
as starlight flashed through geometries of night

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

This is in some ways inspired by my reading the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Not the content aspect of it so much as the storytelling aspect. During the few months it took me to work my way through the tales—yes, I'm a very slow reader—I gained several valuable insights into the overall nature of storytelling and how it can be approached in poetic form.

This is the longest highly structured poem I've written. I hope you'll enjoy.

Three Thumps

Each day she walks through old white oaks and laurel trees
where often on a park bench just beneath their leaves
she sees an older fellow sitting casually,
a book held in his hands not far above his knees.

She finds him always lost amid another world
that turns from page to page as slowly it unfurls
against the backdrop of his mind, the letters curled
in hands as weathered as a pair of walnut burls.

Just recently she chanced to see him as he closed
the covers of a tome to which he held is nose
for several weeks there on that bench within the grove
where leafy shadows played across his rustic clothes.

This caught her eye because just then he lifted up
the words within those pages like a sacred cup
before his deep gray eyes, as reverent as a monk,
then tapped it thrice above his brows with ringing thumps.

At this, she couldn’t help her curiosity
and found herself approaching him to ask why he
would thump the words he pondered on through recent weeks
against the seat of all he shuns, accepts and seeks.

She asked, and he was more than just a touch surprised,
for in his reverie he had not realized
that anyone observed with penetrating eyes
his tendencies and speculated strange surmise.

But, still, he thought, she is a young and vibrant thing
to be so free and open with her questioning;
there is no harm in what she asks or answering,
so I will tell her what this little custom means.

“It came about,” he started, “very long ago,
before I climbed through youth onto this high plateau
that rises steadily above the years below
to stop at cliffs that overlook a great unknown.

“I found myself absorbed into a text then, moved
by all I read, my youthful understanding soothed
as seeds of insight sprouted, grew and came to bloom
within the subtext of my soul and all I knew.

"When every word had danced its way throughout my thoughts—
their twirling motions still reechoed in the halls
of mind—I wondered how much knowledge would be lost
to time and slip beyond the powers of recall.

"Then all at once I thumped the book against my head
and asked the ones who govern life that I forget
not one small passage, phrase or word from what I read
so wisdom may inform the days that lie ahead.

“At this new thought I thumped the book a second time;
for wisdom shapes the waterways through which a life
will flow, and more than ever now I wanted mine
to move through channels carved by what I found inside.

“Then one last hope occurred while still I held the tome,
that any insight gained this way would on its own
bestow good fortune on all days to yet unfold;
and so I thumped it one last time to drive this home.

“Since then, whatever I might read, when all is read,
I pause to three times thump the text against my head,
the first for memory, so though I’ve reached the end,
I’ll always bear in mind the best of what was said;

“The next for wisdom, peerless pearl of peace of mind,
that when affixed within the crown bestows a sight
that guides the wearer of the jewel, however blind,
to paths and possibilities of greater kind.

"The last for fortune, that the understanding gained
from studying the thoughts therein would somehow change
the course of life ahead, the days that still remain,
in ways that mitigate calamity and pain."

He stopped, his salt and pepper beard now motionless,
and saw her dark brown eyes were lost in all he said;
at least a minute passed in silence; sunlight etched
mosaic patterns through the leaves all round the bench.

A ruby dragonfly came drifting near, then soared
abruptly off to fade above a nearby sward;
at last he added, "Now you know the reason for
this little custom you observed and how it formed."

While he was talking, she had dusted off a place
to sit beside him on the bench and contemplate
the words he used in answering and to explain
why he would shock the front edge of his thinning pate.

She listened to his every word and did not stop
his monolog to interject a single thought;
but now that he had finished with his long response,
a silence thickened like a slowly rising fog.

At length the silence overcame her taciturn
consideration of his luminescent words;
and so she crossed a knee beneath her business skirt
to turn and thank him for the story he unearthed.

She told him that she doesn't normally approach
and question individuals whom she doesn't know,
but that his habit was so foreign to behold,
she couldn't help but stop and ask him to disclose.

She stood and thanked him once again and wished him well,
then carried on across the park to where a swell
of skyscrapers emerged above the green—a realm
where dreams are sectioned off to rot in flat gray cells.

He watched her walk away and vanish like a mist
that dissipates when rising sunbeams shine amid
the vapors, causing them to glow and fade in wisps,
then rose himself, returning to his daily niche.

Throughout the day she answered phones, composed reports,
attended meetings, cultivated strong rapport
with all who shared her daily hamster wheel perforce,
and navigated storms of deadlines port to port.

Throughout the day the old man’s words reechoed back
to her attention, while she worked, and overlapped
with mental focus leveled at the daunting task
of satisfying expectations and demands.

Until at last the day was over, and she found
her feet retracing steps through verdant, well-kept grounds
toward where she lives across the other side of town,
the bench now still beneath midsummer evening boughs.

She pulled a book from out her shoulder bag to read
as she commuted through the darkness on a stream
of light that arced and paused below unresting streets
until she heard her station’s name and left her seat.

As she ascended concrete stairs back to the light,
the sun began to set and cast its colors high
on wavy cirrus clouds that fanned across the sky;
again the old man and his words returned to mind.

She reached the steps that rose to meet her townhouse door
and climbed them to the comfort of her covered porch;
she fumbled for her keys, and then her spirit soared
to be at last surrounded by her own décor.

She kicked her heels off in the entry way and left
her keys atop an ash wood corner stand, intent
on eating something small before she got undressed
to soak away the strain of unrelenting stress.

When all was done, she found her shoulder bag downstairs,
still hanging from her grandma's dark-stained oaken chair,
half pulled out from the matching dining table where
she hung it when she first got home and freed her hair.

From this she pulled the book she read while on commute,
its pages nearly finished, nearly all suffused
throughout her intellect, her intuition fused
with understanding raised by every page she viewed.

This book was given to her by a long-time friend
who felt its words would calm her thoughts and help to mend
her spirit from a recent tragedy that leapt
from nowhere to assault her days with grief and dread.

She took it to her room and propped herself in bed,
and just inside an hour finished all it said;
she closed the leaves and pondered everything she read
then suddenly she thumped it once against her head.

"For memory," she thought, "that every word may shine
like stars, however far away, throughout all time
to light the plains and valleys of an open mind;"
and then she raised and thumped the text a second time.

"For wisdom, too," she thought, "without which all I've learned
would be of no more use to me than bridges burned
where chasms gape or surly waters leap and churn;”
then one last thump she gave the book to make a third.

"And, yes," she thought at last, “for fortune—certainly—
a cosmic shift within the roiling karmic sea
that alters all potential futures yet to be
toward something better than what waited formerly."

She sighed, a perfect comfort sifting through her chest,
and placed the book atop the nightstand by her bed;
she reached to turn the light off, feeling oddly blessed,
and turned to drift into a nearly dreamless rest.

This is all developed from a habit I formed some years ago. Whenever I read a book I really enjoyed and felt I gained something from, I do have a tendency to give it a few taps against my skull, just in case osmosis is a real thing.

Structurally, this poem is written in iambic hexameters from the first line to the last. Whether or not you scan the lines strictly as iambs somewhat depends on your accent, but I took accentual variation into account as I wrote this. For instance, most people I know pronounce "every" as "ev'ry", but there are plenty who clearly enunciate that middle syllable. Though it throws an anapaest into the line for those who do so, it doesn't throw off the overall flow of the poem. When I write a poem to meter, I intend for the lines to be read naturally. It should not be necessary to force the meter. Nowhere in this poem will it be necessary to invert the natural accent of a word or phrase. Where weak accents occur—a quantitatively short syllable despite the accent—it's fine to scan them as weak for a "short" hexameter. I weigh such lines and read them aloud several times before deciding whether or not to keep them. This creates variation in the otherwise overpoweringly iambic lines. I've also used enjambment to throw off the expectation of meter in a few places in order to disrupt the "iambic trots" a little. As you read, you can allow the meter to disconnect briefly through this process as a sort of syncopation. This is intentional, and also used for rhetorical impact.

The end-line scheme all the way through is aaaa, but not rhyme. Instead the focus is on end-line assonance, with variations within the scheme involving rhyme, alliteration, and/or consonance.

Monday, March 31, 2014

I now have a book out, an inkling hope, available in paperback and Kindle format. Drawing from poems written between mid 2001 and mid 2013, this has been a labor of love. From this period, 128 poems have been selected that meet criteria for strong visual presentation, an element of timelessness and one or more of the following: potent metaphor or allegory, intricate yet tastefully evasive abstraction, a concrete storyline—real or imagined. Nearly every form I've worked with during this period is represented, including the sonnet, the villanelle, and the ghazal. However, it will delight some readers to learn that roughly half the content space is occupied by free verse.

This book contains three appendices. First, the notes, beautifully formatted, where editorial thoughts can be found on every poem. Second, an index of first lines, which is a very useful function that most older books of poetry possess. Last is an index of forms, where information is provided about each poetic form represented along with a list of those poems written to it.

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About Me

My name is Erin. "Zahhar" comes from a dream I had when I was in my early 20s. My interest in poetry and poetics began in childhood and has grown steadily throughout my life. As time permits, I explore this great art by studying its manifestations and writing both structured and free form poetry. Subject matter spans the spectrum of my experience, interests, and perspectives.

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